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Comment by Amezarak | Hacker News Reader

I think they're making the argument that the upper classes make the argument that family stability is unimportant and should be de-prioritized in favor of "doing what makes you happy", but they don't actually believe that when it comes to their own families. The effect (according to OP) is that the upper classes are destabilizing the lower classes by advertising norms they don't actually believe in.

> The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping politics and culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes.

> But actively undermine the norm for everyone else.

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For ease of reference the author cites the following studies in his article in support of his argument that elites shape political views, culture and norms:

1. "Elite Influence on General Political Preferences"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266731932...

2. "Exploring the direct and indirect effects of elite influence on public opinion"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

3. "Trickle-Down Preferences: Preferential Conformity to High Status Peers in Fashion Choices"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Yea, this is what I got out of it too: The "elite" (whoever they are) are deliberately changing cultural norms to promote single motherhood, unmarried cohabitation, family instability, and so on, but they hypocritically forbidding these things in their own families, and will only admit it in private.

Two questions he doesn't seem to answer:

1. How are The Elite™ actually doing this? Cultural norms are set by culture itself, not some "cultural lawmakers" holed up in an ivory tower somewhere. By what mechanism are these upper class mustache-twirlers "setting cultural norms" for the rest of us? I think this needed more discussion.

2. Why are they doing it? How do they benefit from growing dysfunction and deprivation and society in general going down the drain? How are they benefiting from unmoored non-productive men sitting around all over the place? What is the end game?

I wonder if the elite might be trapped by the culture. (Hear me out, here...)

I don't think the elite actually control the culture. To a large degree, the culture controls the (external behavior of) the elite. They have to appear to be everything they're supposed to be. So they give verbal agreement to single motherhood, unmarried cohabitation, and so on, so that the culture doesn't condemn them. But for themselves, they know that those things cause damage to the next generation, and they avoid it like the plague.

Note that this may be true even if "culture" means elite culture. I could see the culture among elites being that 1) you would be condemned if you were not sufficiently verbally supportive of single motherhood and related shibboleths, and 2) you would be condemned if any such thing happened in your family. (I don't actually know; I don't hang out in those circles, and I don't have a good handle on actual elite culture.)

> they're making the argument that the upper classes make the argument that family stability is unimportant and should be de-prioritized in favor of "doing what makes you happy", but they don't actually believe that when it comes to their own families

Yes, but they do not support this with data, just an anecdote.

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